“If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song.”

Carl Perkins, singer-songwriter

Nile Brook is a small stream in Rangeley, Maine with an elevation of 1,519 feet. It runs down from Old County Road in Dallas Plantation and edges the bottom southern side of our hill, part of the former Lakeview Farm/Ellis Farm. It passes by a small cemetery with graves from the 1800s, including that of Luther Hoar, Rangeley’s first white settler and original owner of the farm. Nathan Ellis purchased it from Luther’s heirs in 1899. The brook then crosses under Route 4 and continues until it empties into Rangeley Lake just south of our community beach.

We’ve lived on that hill part-time for thirty-eight years and the brook was a magnet for our children when they were young. Their exploratory adventures through the woods and down to the brook included encountering wildlife like young moose and rabbits, cooling off in the cool bubbling water, and looking for the gold that legend said existed there.

According to the Maine Geological Survey, Nile Brook does indeed have stream sediment mineral deposits eroded from bedrock which was formed thousands of years ago. The deposits include concentrations of gold, platinum, almandine (in the garnet group), quartz (rock crystal), black ilmenite, and magnetite, a magnetic black iron ore originally called lodestone. Easy riches are hard to come by, however. Panning for gold and other minerals there isn’t only time-consuming but yields are scarce and small. 

In recent years, as we walk the roads higher up on the hill, we get an unobstructed view of the depression where Nile Brook lies from only one spot—where the woods are cleared in a narrow strip for power lines. Recently, however, we noticed a path further along leading through the woods. We followed it and found a trail paralleling the brook with orange markings on the trees that looked quite weathered and old. Had it been there all those years and we never spotted it? (We later found out that it was cut by a homeowner only several years ago.) Still…we walk that route often. How had we always passed it by? My husband, daughter and I followed the trail west and came to a highpoint overlooking the brook. As we kept walking, we came to water level and were able to stand on the rocks in the water.

We didn’t see any fish, but an old report from the 1970s spoke of smelt-spawning runs occurring there. A little research revealed that April always ushers in the annual smelt runs in Maine from cold-water lakes up nearby brooks and streams, but the common group sport of "smelt dipping" (spotting the fish using a flashlight or headlamp and scooping them out of the water using a dip net) is now prohibited. Small rainbow smelts are the key food source for landlocked salmon in the lake, so they are protected.

Continuing on, the path climbed back up to another spot further down the road. As I looked back at the depression the path made, I realized I had always noticed it, but I assumed it was a dried bed created by water runoff from the road, not a path.

Our daughter, who spent many childhood summer days playing near the brook was curious about where it led if you continued walking east. She had never ventured that far as a child. Later in the day, she set out to explore. Her trek took a couple of hours to the source and she reported hearing the rustling of unseen animals in the bushes alongside the stream and seeing an abandoned campsite and a rusty old mining pan. She took photos of a bench and some chairs people set up on the southern bank on high overlooks. Photos of the stream itself were sent to her brother and fellow early adventurer.

Perhaps next summer I’ll take that trek myself.